Sometimes, a receiving station in a communication network may become unavailable. Some examples of how this may happen are if a station leaves the networks, if a station goes down, or if a station performs some function that renders it unavailable to receive. As an example of the latter, a wireless local area network (WLAN) organized according to the IEEE 802.11 standard, published Jun. 26, 1997 (the IEEE 802.11 standard is a WLAN standard developed by an IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) committee in order to specify an “over the air” interface between a wireless client and a base station or access point, as well as among wireless clients), may require stations to perform background scans to keep track of changes in the network, and a station may be unavailable to receive during such a scan.
Such periods of unavailability may create problems. For example, an application running on one station may be attempting to transfer data to another station when that other station becomes unavailable. As a result, such an application may not be able to run to completion.